


Empty Bottles

by scifihobbit



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27800173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifihobbit/pseuds/scifihobbit
Summary: Two sad, pining, drunks with self-esteem issues encourage each other's self-loathing and self-pity. In other words: Quark and Damar are each a giant mess of a person and find something that is most definitely not solace in each other.
Relationships: Damar/Dukat (Star Trek), Odo/Quark, Quark/Damar
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	Empty Bottles

**Author's Note:**

> Am I unreasonably pleased with myself for writing a pairing that has never before been tagged on AO3? Yes.
> 
> Seriously, though, go watch the Dominion War arc (specifically 'Behind the Lines' and 'Favor the Bold') and tell me you don't see this.

The buzz of the bar was subdued. It was always subdued when those miserly Jem’Hadar were in it, and that was all the time these days. Why they insisted on spending their time here Quark would never understand. He’d done everything he could to lure them into a vice or two. He hadn’t quite given up yet, he was certainly not one to turn away from a financial challenge, but he was taking a break on the endeavor, letting the problem simmer until he had some flash of insight. His second round of attempts had been based on the supposition that they came in for the people watching. Maybe they liked to study potential enemies during their leisure time so they would be better prepared when they inevitably had to face them in battle. He’d thought about setting up a gallery on the second level, a prime view, and charging for a spot up there—standing room only, of course. The Jem’Hadar never seemed to sit. But the Jem’Hadar were perfectly satisfied with standing around and glowering anywhere.

Wiping down the same glass he’d had in his hands for more than a minute now, staring at the three Jem’Hadar looming over the dabo table, Quark wondered if maybe they simply enjoyed making people uncomfortable. How could he profit off that without losing the rest of his customers? Before he could ponder this any further the three Jem’Hadar turned to the door and looked even sterner than their standard stony-faced expressions. Damar was darkening the doorstep.

The Cardassian glared back at the Jem’Hadar just as intensely as they were looking at him. Or at least he tried to. His sneering contempt was no match for their dispassionate dismissal. He looked like he cared about their staring match. They didn’t. That was why he lost.

Damar slumped into a stool at the bar. Quark wasn’t sure if he could tell he’d lost the battle of wills. Each time Damar came in he seemed slightly more aware of his exact position in the station’s pecking order. He was still clinging to some willful denial though and Quark had to appreciate the effort, being no stranger to willful denial himself.

“Ferengi!” Damar shouted down the bar in Quark’s direction. It was clear who he was summoning, even if there were a number of Ferengi in the bar.

Quark strolled over and picked up a bottle of Andorian Ale from underneath the counter, wiping it down. “My name’s Quark. You know that.”

“I’ll call you whatever I like,” Damar said.

“What can I get you, Cardassian?”

Damar chuckled at that, just one despondent huff. “Get me a Hepta brew.”

“Of course.” Quark ducked down to the heated alcove beneath the bar—Cardassians liked their brews warm—and grabbed a bottle, popping it open and handing it over. He reached for a glass but Damar stopped him with a wave of his hand.

“Just the bottle.”

Nodding once Quark stepped away to check on a customer further down the row. A Hepta brew meant that Damar planned on being here awhile. A Cardassian could drink more ten or more of those over the course of a few hours and reach what they considered an ideal state of inebriation. The last thing a Cardassian wanted was to get so far into their drink that they lost control. Usually. Quark wouldn’t put anything past Damar.

It wasn’t long—less time than it usually took to consume a brew—before Damar shouted, “Ferengi!” again. Quark rolled his eyes and turned back towards the other side of the bar. There were other waiters in this place. Not to mention Dabo Girls. Why Damar wasn’t bothering one of them was beyond Quark.

Damar thumped the bottle onto the bar surface. “You’ve got to have better Hepta than this. Get me something stronger.”

Pawing through the collection of bottles under the counter Quark muttered to himself. “Guess he can’t get drunk fast enough tonight. Get me this. Get me that. Here’s the swill that will burn his throat just the way he wants.” Quark surfaced and handed it over.

“Never see any Vorta in here, do you?” Damar said as Quark popped the bottle open. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the bar.

Quark shrugged and shook his head.

“Just those Jem’Hadar. Those damn Jem’Hadar in every corner. Still, better than a Vorta. You know what that cowardly, worthless Weyoun abomination did today?”

Glancing around the bar Quark didn’t see anything in immediate need of attention. He did truly believe that to run a successful bar a proprietor should also be a good listener, even to pompous fools like Damar, so he sighed and turned his gaze back on Damar. “No. What?”

“That female founder, the one who’s always swanning around the station—when she’s not holed up in Odo’s quarters—”

Forced to think about what, exactly, might be going on in those quarters Quark’s stomach tied itself into a knot.

“—she interrupts our strategy meeting, as if she has any idea what’s happening in the war right now. She says the assault on the Lyro system is premature—the one we’ve been carefully planning for meeting after meeting without her useless input—and that’s it! The Lyro assault is wiped from the map like it had no value at all.”

While Damar was going on Quark poured himself a shot of this Earth stuff called tequila, unable to stop thinking about Odo’s quarters and how long it had been since the constable harassed him. No one had been drinking tequila since the Dominion moved in, and Quark had found he didn’t mind the taste so much. He tilted the glass to Damar and said, “Here’s to that mud puddle going back where she came from,” and tossed it back in one gulp.

Damar looked up at Quark, almost as if he’d forgotten the bar tender was there, his brow ridges drawn together in an expression somewhere between confusion and surprise. Then he tilted his bottle and took a chug.

“I did see her in here once,” Quark said. “Just the once. She stood up there,” he gestured to the second level and Damar’s eyes followed the movement of his hand, “and just watched.” Quark hissed the last word. “I could feel her eyes on me the whole time, her eyes on my establishment, judging us solids and our pastimes.”

“What does she know,” Damar grumbled. And then he tilted his glass toward Quark again, “To the vices of solids. May we keep them no matter the ‘gods’ decree.” The sneer in Damar’s voice was practically strong enough to curdle the brew in his hand. He finished it in one gulp.

“I’ll keep our vices alive if it’s the last thing I do.” Quark downed another shot. He glanced around the bar again and, satisfied that there was still nothing that required his attention, poured himself another helping of tequila.

\---

Quark was pulled away from commiserating a few times over the course of the evening. There was a Cardassian who complained that his yamok sauce was rotten. There was a Romulan at the Dabo wheel who insisted he hadn’t placed his bet where the Dabo girl said he had. After every interruption Quark returned to the end of the bar and Damar was still there. Quark would fill his shot glass with tequila and hand Damar another bottle and they would continue where they’d left off.

Closing time crept up on Quark. One of the Ferengi waiters was standing at his side, trying to get his attention. Quark could feel it buzzing through the haze of alcohol, but he kept shooing it away, eyes fixed on the glasses between him and Damar. Finally, he whirled on the waiter and shouted, “What?!”

“Permission to close the door?”

Quark glanced around the place. The doors were never to be closed without his say so. Who knew what might be hidden in the shadows, unnoticed by his idiot servers. There wasn’t a customer in sight. The dabo girls were standing idle by the wheel, all the tables had been cleared. And of course there wasn’t an inanimate object that was really Odo in the whole place.

“Yes,” he snapped. “Get out.”

Quark turned back to Damar and realized belatedly that he was a customer, too. “And where will you be continuing your drinking now that I can no longer provide the service.”

“My quarters,” Damar said, without a hint of inflection, and he looked steadily at Quark. Quark could feel the isolation in the Cardassian keenly, like a needle in the back of his neck. He could feel the emptiness where the respect was supposed to be, the hole Dukat’s attention was supposed to fill, and that blank space the female changeling erased over and over every time she appeared. All of that was in Damar’s gaze. All of that was stabbing into the back of Quark’s neck. And rising up from Quark’s gut to meet it was his own isolation: the quiet where hew-mon voices had been; the crevasse between himself and the galaxy beyond this occupation; and most of all the inky black, yawning pit where Odo’s regular patrols and bothering was supposed to be.

“You could continue to provide service there,” Damar said, his voice still flat.

Quark looked at the bottle of tequila. It was more than half empty. He picked it up off the counter. “Lead the way.”

\---

Damar’s quarters were more than sparse. They were barren.

“Wow,” Quark said, without entirely meaning to. The bottle of tequila dangled loosely from one hand. He’d told Damar in no uncertain terms that he would be providing his own drinks for the rest of the night.

“My wife is the sentimental one,” Damar said. “I let her keep the things that might fill a place like this. So she remembers me.”

“You seem pretty—” Quark hiccupped, and then managed to stop himself from finishing the sentence. He’d been going to say ‘sentimental.’ But there was a difference between sentimental and maudlin. Quark knew it. Every good bartender did.

“I don’t spend much time here, anyway,” Damar muttered. “Or I didn’t.”

Quark sat down in the middle of Damar’s floor and took two gulps from the bottle. “Maybe I will then,” he said. “Can’t be in my quarters. Used to be able to hear what Odo was up to, right above me. Then he got that floor soundproofed. Now I know he’s up there doing exchequer knows what with that founder and not being able to hear him is even worse somehow. I miss his godforsaken oozing. And the skitter of his little rat paws. I could tell you the difference between the slither of a Bajoran rattle snake, a Klingon adder, and an Earth asp now. He’s been them all. He’s been every snake you can imagine.”

“I’d be in the intendent’s office now,” Damar continued. The two of them talking on parallel lines and half hearing each other. More importantly, they felt half heard. It was easier not to be alone with these thoughts, even when saying them aloud made the pain more acute. Because saying them aloud made the pain more acute. “That’s how the days are supposed to end. Dukat and me in the intendent’s office, looking out over ops and strategizing. Planning our next move. Working for the glory of Cardassia.”

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Every Cardassian officer loves his Gul.” Damar didn’t have the energy to snap, so his attempt at a curt dismissal came out slurred and pleading. “That’s why our military is the envy of the quadrant.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Quark’s voice was almost sing-song-y, like they were taunting each other on a playground. Sticking their fingers into one another’s open sores. “You love him like your wife loves you. Why don’t you have any of his sentimental keepsakes?” Quark’s eyes flashed across the room. “Where do you hide them?” He tried to push himself up off the floor and collapsed immediately back down.

“Nowhere.” This time Damar did manage to snap.

“Because you don’t have any. But you want some. Does Dukat still have Sisko’s ridiculous ball from that old Earth game?” Even saying that made the back of Quark’s throat sting in a worse way than the tequila ever could. It hadn’t been so long since Sisko had been here, had it? It hadn’t been so long since things were the way they were supposed to be. He had trouble imagining that they could ever be that way again.

“How should I know?”

“Sssssssskkk,” Quark breathed. “That’s what a Klingon adder sounds like.” He hiccupped again and slid onto his belly, propping himself up on his forearms. “I can’t look as much like one as Odo can, but I can sound even more like one. He doesn’t have the ears for it.”

“You love him.”

“Don’t be preposterous.” Quark’s mouth tripped on the word and it took him four tries to get it out in one piece.

Damar didn’t say anything back. He didn’t have quite the love for words that Quark did, didn’t know how to hide behind them or how to attack with them. He yanked himself out of his chest plate instead and dropped it to the floor. It made a metallic clang and Quark winced, bringing one hand up to his ear.

“Ow.” Quark looked up. The patterns of cartilage across Damar’s arms and chest jutted through the tight fabric of his regulation undershirt.

“That’s a scar.” Quark poked at a bump near Damar’s collarbone that didn’t fit the symmetrical pattern of Cardassian ridges.

Damar flinched away, and then grabbed Quark’s hand in his, squeezing it till Quark could feel the pressure even through the haze the tequila had swathed all his senses in. “Ow,” he hissed and Damar grinned at him, eyes glinting.

“That’s it. That’s your memento. Did Dukat give it to you? Or did you get them together? What brave battle did you fight for the Cardassian empire together?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You don’t know what loyalty means.” Damar was still squeezing Quark’s hand.

“And I’m lucky I don’t. I’m loyal to profit. That’s all that matters.” And if Odo had been loyal to justice—which Quark didn’t think he ever had been, and certainly couldn’t claim to be now, even though he probably did—and if that meant that they were loyal to their opposition to each other, then that didn’t have anything to do with what Damar was talking about.

“You haven’t been making much of it though, have you?” Damar taunted. “You’re still acting like Odo’s going to catch you at every turn. Acting like it isn’t going to make it true.”

“Let him catch me at this, then,” Quark grunted and leaned forward, furiously pressing his mouth against Damar’s.

Damar matched Quark’s ferocity, shoving him to the floor and landing on top of him his whole weight. The Cardassian was rough and cool to the touch and Quark didn’t think.

The tequila bottle fell from his hand, but there was so little left in it that nothing spilled on to the floor.


End file.
